[governance] Re: Antispam practices

[tapani.tarvainen at effi.org]

On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 08:28:14AM +0200, Peter Dambier (peter at echnaton.serveftp.com) wrote:

> >Who am I forcing to do what, if I refuse mail from some IP?
> >
> >OK, I'm forcing those who want to send mail to me to find other means.
> >But I think I'm within my rights to do that.
> 
> You are one of those guys who force me to have some 20 mailers, depending
> to whom I want to send.

Who is forcing you to send mail to me?
And what gives you the right to insist I accept it -
especially since I have to pay for accepting it?

> >May I also publicise information about the courier company and
> >its annoying practices and suggest others boycott it, too,

> If I am allowed to publicise your annoying practices and
> ask them to exclude you from newsletters because you bounce
> them anyway.

Indeed you are - and please do. 
I don't want any newsletters I haven't specifically asked for
(and when I do that, I make sure my spam filters will let
them through).

> >accepting email from spam-prone
> >address spaces is also expensive.

> That is what I am doing right now. I have found out it is much
> easier to sort out the spam than having to look into the spamfolder
> for lost emails.

You don't get enough spam.
My spam filter collects about 2000 spam messages every day.
And that is _after_ blocked IPs and dictionary attacks &c.
(I don't actually block many, mostly I use blacklists just
for SpamAssassin scoring, but some I do block.)

There is no way I am going to scan all that junk manually.

> There are other means like greylists ...

Greylisting also causes legitimate mail to be rejected,
and its effectiveness is already going down when spämmers
are working around it (which is easy enough).

> It is a religious war. Some people giving up email completly because it
> has shown not to work any longer - others trying to fix it.

I don't see anything religious in it. After all, email is just a tool:
if it breaks, you either try to fix it or find something better.
Disagreements about which fix is best or what tool would be
better are perfectly normal and secular, in my opinion.

> People trying to get things done the way they like it, have to
> run their own mailers or they can CC all the big brothers.

Yes. As noted, I run my own mail server - for several
reasons, including being able to set up spam filters
just the way I want.

> >>Also, I am very interested in the principle point about having users 
> >>forced to go through their ISPs.

> I could not use it because they did not support linux.

I don't see how they need to know or care what OS their clients use.
(In case somebody cares, I also use Linux almost exclusively.)

> And my ISP is more often on everybodies blacklist than not.

So shouldn't you blame (or change) your ISP rather than blacklist 
maintainers?
Or push for legislation that'd force ISPs to behave?

Anyway, if you can't change your ISP, it is always possible to work
around their restrictions, if you have the technical and financial
means.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen
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